We're Dust in the Spotlights
by lovelydays
Summary: Twelve deaths from the 74th Hunger Games, seen through the eyes of the mentors. Characters include Johanna, Cashmere, Glimmer, Marvel, Clove, Cato, Foxface, Rue, Thresh, OCs, Gen. POVs implied.


**ONE.**

In District One, as a mentor, you're matched with a tribute the day the kid is promoted to Residential. Someone whose angle looks a lot like yours, someone whose strengths and weaknesses mirror yours as well. The mentor-tribute bond is important in your district, and it lasts a long time, for the winners. You got the girl. You're going to have the girl for the rest of your life, if you're lucky. If she's lucky.

At the Center, you told her everything you could. You told her that her beauty was a handicap as much as it was a strength, and that the key was to keep the others thinking that you're not_ quite_as much of a threat as they are. Win the audience over by any means necessary. Your body is your most potent weapon, and you may have to do things with it that you don't want to do. Do them anyway. It isn't you they're seeing; it's an illusion. Do whatever you have to do. Stay alive.

You wanted to tell her the rest. How the real winners are the ones who die. You wanted to tell her about what the President has done to you and your brother and all the others, the beautiful ones.

You pause, drink in hand, as the camera zooms in on your sleeping tribute, while in split-screen, Twelve Girl saws away at the tree.

You turn away when the nest falls. You don't need to watch. You know she's better off.

You knew he never had much of a chance. You thought he'd make it to the final four, easily, but no further. At the Academy you saw his potential, you believed in him. When you saw the other tributes, the pair from Two with knives in their eyes and blood under their nails, you knew it was all over. He would never go home.

But he's made it this far and now that the supplies his alliance relied on are gone, you've got sponsorships to secure. There's a party tonight and you know who's on the guest list.

He sets the traps. You smile, you watch him go. You knew this skill would come in handy; you pressed him, back home, to learn knots and snares, knowing that most years, only one or two tributes bother with this. It was the saving grace during your own Games.

He sets the traps and he kills Eleven Girl and then, just as suddenly, he's gone. Arrow through the throat. Twelve Girl starts to put on a big, weepy show for the cameras and the districts and the cameras all switch to her as your tribute's cannon fires in the distance. She's killed both the kids from your district and no one cares for them, no one mourns for them, the Capitol simpletons around you are preoccupied and enamored with the girl's foolish teenage love story and grand shows of emotion (it's got to be an angle, this can't be real, you think as she pounds the ground and sobs for Eleven).

You knew he wouldn't win. But you had hoped that someone would care when he died.

**TWO.**

You have a good feeling about this year. You saw her scores from the Center and immediately said, "I want that one." You knew there would be no need for fancy angles or obfuscation or deception. A girl like that can put on a show without any scenery or fancy costumes; just a couple knives and a worthy target.

You remember your last words to her. "You have all the preparation in the world," you said. "Don't let it go to waste."

So when she charges across the field and slams Girl Twelve into the ground beside the Cornucopia, you're ready. Adrenaline courses through your body as you lean into the screen, practically falling off the couch in the Mentors' Lounge.

And then she starts to talk.

No, you say, raising your voice and yelling out loud as if you were alone, ignoring the others who move away from you. No, no, you stupid fucking girl, what are you doing? What's the number one rule? Kill first, gloat later. Stop it stop it stop it you're forgetting yourself, you're giving her an advantage, all the sponsorship gifts in the world won't be worth it if she gets ahold of your knife now –

Her last word is "Cato!" and then the rock hits her skull, over and over and over and she falls to the ground like a discarded rag doll. She doesn't go out like a martyr. She goes out like a scared little girl.

You stalk from the room, disgusted. She had no one to blame but herself.

He's been gone since he found his partner's body. Something within him broke at that moment, you saw it onscreen. Whatever shred of humanity was left inside him is long gone, gone with the blood that trickled from the girl's mouth as he screamed and cursed and slammed his huge fist against the Cornucopia.

He's been gone since the feast and you've barely been able to watch him since, because you know the Gamemakers won't let him win. The audience loves the tributes who put on a good show, but you've known all along that he isn't going to win. He's the designated villain in this year's narrative, and the Gamemakers just want to give the audience a good show, where the villain dies and the star-crossed lovers live happily ever after, and the only thing you can hope for now is that your tribute won't die as part of this story. You waited and wished and hoped that Eleven would take him out in the fields, because at least that would be the end he deserved, not some gooey sacrifice for the lovebirds. But after he emerged and there were only three left, the mutts came and you knew this would be the end.

He falls off the Cornucopia and a camera zooms in on his face as the mutts tear him apart and he screams. Screams forever. You could swear he's screaming at you.

Next year will be better, you know it.

**THREE.**

You're so proud of him. He's lasted so long. You didn't imagine that he would do this well, but you told him that first night on the train, "Show them how smart you are. Let them know that you will cooperate. Make them trust you. Then use that trust against them." District 3 may not breed killing machines, but it breeds geniuses.

Manipulating the mines was his idea entirely, and you couldn't help smiling and celebrating, because if he wanted to, he could wait out the fighting and then blow everyone else up while they slept, and they'd be gone before they knew what happened. You remember him in the Capitol apartment, talking excitedly to fill up the quiet moments, of which there were too many. He told you how much he just wanted to go home. You told him that he could do it. He had everything he needed.

The supply pile explodes and you see him pleading with the huge boy from Two, and then his neck is snapped and he is gone, tossed aside, instantly forgotten.

You file this year away in your mind anyway. Things went better than usual. That's all you can ask.

**FOUR.**

Your mentor partner is long gone. His boy died in the bloodbath and now God knows where he is (your partner, not the boy), probably out at some party, fucking some Capitol girl who practically knocked herself out to get close to him. Fuck him, anyway. You're going to watch and wait.

Your girl has aligned herself with the other Careers. Smart move. She doesn't have the finesse that they do and she hasn't been training her whole life – the training program in Four isn't nearly as intense as it is in One and Two – but it's not as if she doesn't stand a chance. She's psychologically sound, which is more than the Ones and Twos can say, and she's strong and smart and self-sufficient. If she can last until the end, she might have a chance.

You've been doing your best, singing her praises to the sponsors and some of them bite. After all, she may not have One's long legs or Two's spotless aim, but she's a pretty girl and more than capable. You've watched with wide eyes and when Twelve Boy joined their group, you crossed your fingers that she'd show a little streak of ruthlessness and take him out, but no such luck. She's not being extraordinary, she's just… being.

She falls asleep with the others under Twelve Girl's tree and you retire for the night. When you wake up, it's to the notice that your tribute has been killed and viewing the Games is no longer mandatory.

You had high hopes for her.

**FIVE.**

She's been watching the boy and girl from Twelve for the past few hours, and you've been watching her. She was an enigma from the start, and when you tried to offer advice, she brushed it off. She told you she had a plan and you didn't press the issue, because each year, someone like her shows up – they've already accepted their imminent death, and they just want to deal with their last days on their own.

You assumed she was one of those and so when she disappeared, ran, and stayed alive, you were so pleasantly surprised, thrilled even. You dared to let yourself believe she might come home, but you couldn't convince anyone else of this. She hasn't received a single sponsor since the beginning of the Games. Say what you will about honor and integrity, but the Capitol doesn't give a shit. They want to root for someone who kills for fun or at least for necessity, not an odd little girl caught in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

It's been days since she's lost her last reliable source of food and she's been following the Twelves for the past few hours. Stalking them, almost. But she has no weapons and she's not a match for the two of them, especially shaking from hunger as she is. She's had a few roots and leaves – she knows edible plants, it's to this credit that she hasn't keeled over already. But as much as you plead and beg with the sponsors to just send her a loaf of bread, a bowl of soup, anything, they brush you off.

You watch as she falls to her knees, exhausted, and then looks at the bush before her.

Her lips form the words as her eyes grow cloudy and she pulls two, three of the berries off the branches, crushes them between her fingers and sniffs at them. Nightlock. She knows what this is. She is not stupid.

You cannot tear your eyes away even as she pops three of the berries into her mouth and lies down on the ground, waiting.

**SEVEN.**

You're too young to be here in the Mentors' Lounge, watching the countdown surrounded by these people who have participated in more Games than you've been alive to experience. You only won last year, there are kids in the arena who are older than you, but tradition dictates that victors always mentor the year directly after they win. You didn't know what to say to your tribute because you didn't have a strategy when you went in, and you barely made it out, anyway, you only won because you could withstand the bitter cold and because your mother used to take you out for archery practice just in case your name came up in the reaping. You won because you had luck and skills your tribute didn't. You didn't know what to say.

When she stumbles off her podium and runs straight into the District 1 boy's spear, you want to throw up. You haven't got the stomach that these older mentors do. You wish you did. Your tribute is dead almost before the games have started.

The boy from your district is dead in almost another instance and your mentor partner runs a hand down her face, sighing, then looks at you. "You don't have to watch anymore," she says sharply.

You leave. You're not obligated to watch anymore, so you hope the Games last a long time this year, because the longer you get to stay, the longer you get to stuff yourself with the Capitol food you remember from last year. You hate that you are excited about this but you remember what they told you. You can't control what happens to you anymore. You can only control how you feel about it.

You hope there's a party somewhere that's serving goose liver, but if not, you can just order it in the apartment.

Your boy dies in the bloodbath and you roll your eyes and dismiss the first-year kid who's come with you. You weren't her mentor. You wish you had been. You've failed every tribute you've mentored so far, but what does anyone expect from you? You're a fuck-up. That's about it.

You wait around for Finnick. His boy dies not so long after. The two of you are so much alike in this way.

"We're protecting them." He says what you're thinking. They're good kids, but they don't need to see the other side. They don't need to see what happens to the winners. They're better off now, dead in an instant with no lifetime of lines to toe and people to please.

You want to agree and vocalize all of this but what comes out is "Let's get drunk," and he nods in assent, because that's what you do every year; you let them go quickly and then you get drunk. You don't want to live like this. You don't want these kids to have to live like you.

**NINE.**

He is the first to die and you knew from the start he wouldn't win. You didn't expect him to be the first, though.

You told him to grab what he could and run. You should have just told him to run. If you could do it over again, you would – never mind the backpack, just leave, go, wait out the bloodbath and survive as long as you can.

You've been doing this for forty years. Only two living victors in your entire district, so the two of you are more or less stuck with the job. You shouldn't let it affect you anymore, but when you think about your own kids – the one you lost to the Games thirteen years ago, the other two who grew up with you holding them too tightly and never letting them out of your sight for very long – you think about your own kids and you can't get jaded.

You try to help them every year, and every year, you fail them.

**ELEVEN.**

From the beginning you dreaded watching this little girl die.

"What are your strengths?" you asked, choking the words out despite yourself, and she went on about how fast she was, and light on her feet, and she told you she didn't want to have to kill anyone but she really didn't want to die, and if she had to, she could probably do it. So you told her your own story.

You told her how you came to the Games not knowing a thing about weapons, but knowing plenty about healing and medicinal plants. You showed the older, stronger kids in training that you knew how to heal, and you struck a deal with them: you would treat whatever injuries they sustained as long as they didn't kill you, at least until the very end. Then you poisoned them all.

The little girl listened to the story and said it was brilliant of you, but, she said, she doesn't know a thing about healing. "But you know about other things," you said, "so use those. Just try to stay alive until the very end. Hide. Can you climb trees?" She had nodded emphatically at that, and you told her to hide in the trees. Stay alive. Whatever you do, stay alive.

She listened to you and she stayed alive and stayed alive and stayed alive, until suddenly she wasn't alive anymore, a spear from the awful District 1 kid's hand lodged in her stomach, and as you watch the girl from 12 drape her body with flowers, make her beautiful before she is removed from the arena, you realize you must find a way to repay her.

Two has had it in for your tribute since Thresh rebuffed his advances to join their alliance in training. You knew Thresh before he was reaped; his family lived not too far from yours back in town, and you remember how he took tesserae for all his little siblings, worked the fields all his life to provide for them, and you always prayed you'd never have to escort him to the Games.

Prayers don't mean shit in the world you live in.

You knew Thresh wouldn't win because he didn't want to. He told you as such. "I don't want to," he said. "I don't want to die but I don't want to win."

They've been fighting for two days out in the fields, Thresh and the boy from Two, the monster with snarling teeth and vicious eyes who became thoroughly unhinged the moment he found his districtmate's body. He's going to kill your tribute and it's just a matter of when.

Just as the moment arrives, Two wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, only smearing more blood across his face. "You killed Clove," he says, advancing on Thresh with fury in his eyes. "This isn't about winning. I could kill everyone else in this place and I wouldn't give a shit. This –" he brandishes his sword, his eyes gleaming – "this is for Clove."

"She killed the little girl," Thresh responds, stony, cornered. And Two laughs.

"No," he says. "No, she didn't. You got it all wrong."

There's a thrust of the sword and you can't watch anymore. Another year. Another two lost.


End file.
